Deeper than Hades
by CrawleyHouse
Summary: She is in my blood, like cheap wine. Bitter and sweet, tinged with regret. I'll never be free of her, nor do I wanna be, for she is what I am. All that is, should always be. Set during Daybreak Pt II


_A hurt/comfort one-shot without the comfort._

_I've been a fan of Battlestar for a very long time but had never written anything for it before. I absolutely adore the slow burn that is Adama and Roslin but I don't think he lasted very long up on that ridge with her._

_Set during Daybreak Pt II. Canonical character death._

Every strike into the rocky earth shuddered through his fingers. Reverberated in the aching bones of his wrists. Stunted through his elbows. Before finally dying in the dull aching of his shoulders where his body trembled with a deeper pain.

The ground was hard and dry and full of jagged stones. He could have chosen a different place. Started again. But it had to be here.

Here where his tears watered the earth as he heaved it out like a gaping wound.

His breath tore harder from his throat now, with all the air he could ever breathe and the warmth of an unfamiliar sun hot on his neck, raising that hard lump faster in his throat.

He bit viciously into the soil, palms raw against the slick metal, ragged breath turned gasping until the ground finally swam and blurred behind the veil shadowing his vision. Knees buckling with that first ragged, heaving sob.

The spade slipped in his grasp and fell, clinking dully against the stones. He fell into an awkward seat, hand fumbling blindly for some measure of comfort in the red material he found there, one booted foot resting in the hole he'd made as if he meant to join her.

The wind was picking up now, cooling the damp sweat at the base of his neck as it sighed through the trees. Something in his broken brain heard a comforting hum in the familiar sound and felt the gentle pressure on his forearm that usually accompanied it.

For the briefest moment he could have fooled himself, closed his streaming eyes and pressed his forehead against a gritty knee, felt her lean against him… but the wind lifted and with it the hem of the blanket he had so carefully tucked around her; revealing her hands, like pale spiders, clasped over her stomach.

He dragged himself out of the hole to her side, replacing the blanket around her shoulders, tucking it more securely this time.

"That's better." He murmured, his voice catching on the rough, exposed edges. Straightened the glasses on her nose and fixed the errant, wiry strands of her wig.

If he tried hard, she could be sleeping.

But if she were sleeping her glasses would be loosely clasped in her right hand, brought high on her chest, above the left one; cradling the open spine of a book she'd borrowed. Her face turned into the comfort of his couch.

He stroked her cheek, almost hesitantly, as if the touch might disturb her. Lashes fluttering to reveal the warm glow of her eyes, more wondrous than a Caprican forest on its best day. Her face breaking into a lazy smile, still delicious with sleep.

"I love you." He whispered, wishing he had told her then, "I love you," and gathered her up as if she were made of glass.

The hole was not very deep, barely enough to reach his knees if he were to stand in it.

He laid her down gently, with more hesitancy and care than he had laying down his first-born son. He lifted her head tenderly and brought it back down to rest on his bundled tanks.

He did not want to bury her in her wig. She had hated how it had itched and scratched. But then again, she would probably never forgive him if he buried her bald. The barest hint of a smile raised his mouth at the thought, and he arranged the dark strands around her face and over her shoulders… too dark to be real.

He would bury her how she wanted. As the President of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol.

He brought her hand to her chest, the right one, his ring hanging loosely on her slender finger and removed her glasses, setting them gently in hand. He stroked the paper-thin skin of her wrist. Still cold, even after the false warmth of the sun.

He would bury her how he loved her. As Laura.

"Fare thee well," his voice was hoarse, but his eyes were dry, "My own true love."

Finally spent.

Beyond grief.

_But only for a little while._

He wanted to believe it. She had been so good at making him believe. Never more than now. But he believed in her. Not her Gods.

She had wanted a religious service. Like Cally's. But he knew no prayers.

"Lords of Kobol, hear my prayer," he recited in reflex,

"take up the spirit of Laura Roslin," but the words sounded hollow in the tight of his chest,

"your faithful servant…" and his voice shook at the cruel fate her gods had pushed on her, the fate she'd shouldered with dignity and grace and courage,

"into your keeping… She was the light of my life, the blood in my veins, the voice in the dark…"

He did not want her words of remembrance to be ones of anger,

"My love for her is higher than the heavens, deeper than Hades, and broader than the earth…" the words stung his eyes as much as the cold had the night that he had recited them to her. Her body warm against his, voice reverberating in his chest,

"It has no limits. No bounds. Everything has an ending except my love for her… I'll never be free of her. Nor do I want to be."

_So if you frakkers can hear me… take care of her._

He could not look as he piled the earth back over her. Reclaiming her from him.

The ridge was rocky. Scattered stones littered the path and had dinged up his raptor on landing.

Earth was a gift.

Their lives were a gift.

But it had taken its tithing.

He gathered them up, even as they bit into the punished flesh of his hands and set them above the raw and ragged earth like a raised scar.

A wound that would never properly heal.

_A/N: Parts of Adama's eulogy are taken from Knee 5 (Einstein on the Beach, Philip Glass)._


End file.
